Grit Lab Report

Hi Talia,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 2: I have 2 or 3 emerging interests but am unsure how to figure out which one to pursue .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were tradition, benevolence, and security.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was conscientiousness.

You said your top three talents were social, analytic, and verbal.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to get a job .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Grocery shopping .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Finding time .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I go for a run I must go to Trader Joe’s .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in Exercise .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt Attacked when receiving critical feedback, and Attacked when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling nearly an extreme amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being recruiting .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .

In one word, you said it made you feel Good .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

That I need to find something I'm really interested in !
Interest is an emotion
Move in the direction or people you want to be like
Don't quit on a bad day
Goals need to be specific
Expertise comes with delineate practice
Don't be defensive when receiving feedback
Stress can be enhancing !
Don't rely on willpower
Relationships are vital
You can be a sustainable giver

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Yuka Nakada
Talia is a great teammate who is always proactive during conversations. Even when she was busy with recruiting, Talia remained energetic and curious about what every team member had to say. She is caring, hard-working, and curious, and I am very happy I got to meet her this semester. Whenever Talia was a team leader, she made sure everyone shared their thoughts and was a great listener; and whenever she was not a leader, she still made sure that our conversation flowed in the best way possible. I am 100% sure she will succeed in everything she sets her heart on. Her discovery project on meditation and mindfulness was excellent, as it is a topic in which I am also interested. I was glad to see that Talia was able to find a meditation model that worked for her, and I really appreciated her explanation of how it works. It was great to see her results after so much deliberate practice over this semester. Her presentation inspired me, and I am excited to try it myself and improve my overall health. Thank you so much for everything this semester, Talia!
Laura Baeyens
I really enjoyed getting to know Talia over the last semester. Talia made sure that our discussions were super engaging and inclusive. She's not afraid to dive into different perspectives and really listens to what everyone has to say. I appreciate how she keeps the vibe positive and encourages us to explore new ideas. I felt that I learned a lot from Talia's presentation on mindfulness and meditation. I enjoyed learning about the different perspectives and what she felt was the most effective. I think her decision to focus on meditation shows a lot about who she is as a person. It shows that Talia is a person who cares a lot about mental wellness and her efforts to teach the rest of the class what she learned illustrates how she also cares about those around her.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.